I worry for British politics.
Some people are expressing concern for Jeremy Corbyn’s welfare as he appears to have been silent during the Conservative Party conference. What they would really appreciate is a meaningless press release to salve their quavering because politics is only happening when it has been typed onto an email and zapped around the various news offices or it has been read out to camera. That’s when you REALLY know politics is happening.
Politics isn’t that thing that happens behind the scenes when politicians are working on having a practical answer to a problem or trying to negotiate. It’s important that politicians break away from that unimportant stuff of actually creating solutions so that they can appear to be doing something. That’s far more important, the appearance of doing something even when it interferes with actually doing something.
It’s also important that politicians counter argue every insane utterance from their opposing party because … well, there’s no actual reason why they should do that. Utterances aren’t legislation proposals that can be fought in the House of Commons, they’re made to gain headlines. Sure, it gives us plebs something to rail against but it’s not actually something that should require knee jerk reactions from opposing parties but it does provide an opportunity for people already predisposed to attacking Jeremy Corbyn to attack Jeremy Corbyn. British politics really has descended into a level of moronity that is troubling.
Yes, the important thing isn’t the bile being spewed by the Tories. It isn’t that the media have not been holding them to account for the past six years. It isn’t that Britain’s public service broadcaster has been subsumed by Tory lickspittles in key front of house positions, helping to distort political narratives in favour of the Tories. What’s important is that your misplaced hatred of Jeremy Corbyn needs to be reinforced to salve that nagging nugget of thought that you could be embarrassingly wrong about what his leadership represents.
When people who would appear to be enemies of what the Tories have been proposing during their conference use the opportunity to attack the leader of the opposition to the Tories then it’s no wonder we’re in the predicament we currently find ourselves. There are people who flounced away from Labour as a result of Corbyn’s win in the leadership election, pledging to vote for the Tories. What a screwed up world.
